Dana Perino discussed her debut novel Purple State at an event in Westport, answering questions from a longtime friend and signing copies for attendees.
Perino took the stage in conversation with Westporter Danielle Dobin, and books were available for purchase and signing at the event. She opened the evening by reminding the room of the job that made her a public figure, calling herself "former White House Press Secretary for President George W. Bush—the first Republican woman to hold the job." Perino is also a anchor, co-host of The Five, co-anchor of America's Newsroom and the host of the podcast Perino on Politics.
The appearance put a familiar political voice squarely into the world of fiction. Purple State follows Dorothy “Dot” Clark, a 25-year-old New York City PR professional who takes a job on a high-stakes political campaign in Cedar Falls, Wisconsin. The novel sends Dot into the kind of retail politics Perino has watched closely as one of ’s key election analysts: she works to help flip Wisconsin blue and finds herself drawn to Danny Dawson, a truck-driving, hockey-loving local who complicates the mission.
That plot — a Republican media figure writing a novel about a campaign bent on flipping a Midwestern state blue — supplied the evening’s central tension. Perino’s name carries a particular political shorthand; her CV and television roles tether her to conservative commentary. Yet the story she told and the characters she introduced on stage reach across that shorthand, offering what the book’s publicity presents as a blend of high-stakes politics with humor, heart and an unexpected love story.
Perino framed the novel as an exercise in storytelling rather than a partisan tract, and she has the publishing history to support the pivot: before Purple State she wrote And the Good News Is..., Let Me Tell You About Jasper, Everything Will Be Okay, and I Wish Someone Had Told Me. The Westport event made clear this is her first work of long-form fiction, a debut novel from a writer who has spent years explaining politics and personality to television audiences.
The conversation also carried a smaller, quieter through-line: a friendship that predates both of their current public lives. Perino and Dobin became roommates in a group house on Capitol Hill in 1995 and lived directly across the street from the Library of Congress. The two have regularly shared book recommendations for thirty years, and Dobin’s presence onstage turned the event into a public reunion as much as a book talk. Their rapport allowed Perino to move between campaign mechanics and scenes of small-town life without losing the room.
That blend — a seasoned political communicator writing about a campaign that aims to change a state’s partisan tilt, and doing so with a rom-com heartbeat — exposed a contradiction the event could not smooth over entirely. Readers who know Perino from cable television and White House podiums might be surprised to find her protagonist working to "flip Wisconsin blue." That choice forces a reappraisal: Perino is willing to place her storytelling inside a narrative that, on its face, runs counter to the politics she has often been associated with.
By the time the signing line wrapped, the practical fact remained simple. Perino stood at a table and signed copies; people bought the book. For a public figure whose platform has been television and political analysis, that transaction signals a deliberate move into a different register of public life: fiction aimed at readers rather than viewers, character-driven scenes rather than press briefings.
What matters today is not that a familiar television voice has written a book, but that she has chosen fiction to explore the messy work of persuasion and the human costs of campaigns. Perino’s Westport appearance — the conversation with Danielle Dobin, the books for sale and the signatures on the table — shows a media figure expanding into storytelling in a way that asks readers to meet her away from the podium. If Purple State is taken at face value, it is the clearest evidence yet that Perino intends to speak to a broader audience as both a commentator and a novelist.
